The Liberal Yearbook

By 1914 the Liberal Party had been governing Britain ever since its stunning general election victory of 1906. Four years later the Party was out of office, and so enfeebled it would never again form a government. What prompted the Liberal decline in the years of The Great War, and why did this decline then accelerate? Trevor Wilson's classic study analyses the strains exerted on Liberal principles by war, and the leadership crisis induced in 1916 by Lloyd George's ousting of Asquith. 'A good political mystery, and Mr Wilson has told it in fine dramatic style.' A.J.P. Taylor 'Offers portraits of those rivals, Asquith and Lloyd George, that are among the best - the most plausible and the most temperate - available.' New Yorker

Now in its 150th edition, The Statesman's Yearbook continues to be the reference work of choice for accurate and reliable information on every country in the world. Covering political, economic, social and cultural aspects, the Yearbook is also available online for subscribing institutions: www.statesmansyearbook.com.

'the most convenient and reliable starting point for information on public affairs' - George J. Mitchell, US Senator. Each copy comes with FREE online access to www.statesmansyearbook.com . Site license upgrades are also available for libraries who wish to network the data. New this year: a chronology of the 'credit crunch.'

A new title in the Oxford Handbooks in History series, offering an authoritative view of British political history from 1800 to 2000, engaging with the sweeping changes in the ways in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world, and suggesting avenues of future research.

Political parties formed the cornerstone of the liberal democracy for which Britain claimed it was fighting in the Second World War. However, that conflict represented the most sustained challenge to the British party system during the twentieth century. War forced the suspension of normal electoral politics, and exerted considerable extra demands on the time and loyalties of party activists and organizers. This all posed a serious challenge to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties. Parties at War uses an unusually broad and deep range of records of the main political parties to explore how they responded to the challenge of war. Extensive use of the local as well as the national-level papers of the major parties offers a fuller picture than ever previously attempted. Andrew Thorpe focuses on what parties actually did, at both local and national levels, to sustain their organization during the war. He assesses the varying impacts of war, not just on each of the parties, but also over time, and between the different regions and areas of Britain. Thorpe demonstrates how wartime struggles over organization had significance not just for the election of the first majority Labour government in 1945, but also for the longer-term development of 'party' in modern British politics.

Now in its 149th edition, The Statesman's Yearbook continues to be the reference work of choice for accurate and reliable information on every country in the world. Covering political, economic, social and cultural aspects, the Yearbook is also available online for subscribing institutions: www.statesmansyearbook.com .